MultiAVCHD - official thread

[spoRv]

MultiAVCHD - official thread

Here you can post your experience about MultiAVCHD, tips & tricks, whatever you think may think could be useful to use better this fantastic, free tool... and, of course, ask for help!

Something I learned about it:

• if you see that you AC3 tracks are always re-encoded, even if they are perfectly compliant, just set "use eac3to" on, and set "Non-HD audio" to 640; this will prevent any AC3 track below that bitrate to be converted
  
• when you set languages for audio and subtitles tracks, remember to use deu instead ger for German
  

and many other things that now I can't remember... but I'll post here whenever they come to my mind!

[spoRv]

I replaced the TSmuxer files inside MultiAVHCD with a newer version, and, despite the fact it "seems" to work on my PC - each m2ts file could be read - when I burn the BD-R, it plays only the intro, and then nothing more... no menu, no movie, nothing! I must note that now my old PS3 fat recognize the BD-R, when before it didn't, but it plays nothing, black screen...

I strongly hope to find a way to produce a perfectly compliant BD with it, but I suspect no software - even the best - will have some kind of incompatibility...

[Valeyard]

The AVCHD specification allows for distribution on DVD media, not BD or CD or HD-DVD. Although it is true that it's essentially a lighter version of Blu-ray (i.e. lower bit-rate etc). Blu-rays must be encrypted with AACS to be compliant. AACS, of course, can't be added to a BD-R just as CSS can't be added to a DVD-R. Therefore it is impossible to create a compliant BD-R that is guaranteed to play across all players. I don't have a PS3, but note that Sony was one of the architects of the BD format, so if they want to prevent you from playing an unencrypted BD they will, just because they can.

[spoRv]

I'm not sure the lack of the AACS folder is the cause of lower standalone BD players compatibility... indeed, using EasyBD lite - which doesn't use AACS - the BD-Rs are more compatible than the ones made using MultiAVCHD; I'm pretty sure the problem lies in TSmuxeR; I guess if using an older TSmuxeR inside MultiAVCHD and/or BDedit to fix the final output will help to increase compatibility.

Or, slapping a copy of an AACS folder into a MultiAVCHD authored BD-R may help...

[Valeyard]

Yeah I agree it's unlikely the issue, however Sony could send out patched firmware for their devices at any point to stop the playback of unencrypted BDs (as could any other overly zealous BD player manufacturer), and they're just the kind of company that might do something like that. Let's not forget when Matshita drives were manufactured so that a mismatched region disc was prevented from being read at the firmware level, defeating DVD Decrypter/DVDFab/AnyDVD from reading the disc. Although no other drive manufactures went to this extent, it's not difficult to imagine Sony and other preventing playback of unencrypted BDs, especially as WinDVD already did it years ago (I don't use WinDVD, but I believe they changed their tune now). And of course since Sony was happy enough to embed rootkits into CDs to try and stop them being copied as well!

You can't encrypt a BD-R. The sector that stores the encryption keys doesn't exist and can't be created on one, just like DVD. I once heard that a DVD+R could theoretically store the CSS encryption key sector (because it is meant to more closely mimic the pressed-DVD structure), but you'd have to program your drive at the firmware level to do it. Encryption is the whole reason you can't just make a 1:1 copy that's still encrypted and expect it to play back - because you can't put the CSS/AACS keys on a DVD-R/BD-R. Hope that makes sense.

[spoRv]

Out of curiosity, does a commercial BD without AACS exist?

[Valeyard]

Well if it does it's out of specification. Commercial DVDs without CSS certainly exist - I have a few! Here's a page that has a real-world cost to publishers for short runs. At least they did make it cheaper, but they still refused to allow unencrypted discs. Maybe one day we'll at least have an AVCHD specification that allows content on more than just DVD media - but at the moment all fan-made BD-25/BD-50 stuff is out of specifications.

If Sony did find out that there were publishers pressing unencrypted discs to avoid the AACS royalties, then they might think about rolling out firmware that block their playback. I think it would be more likely they would purposefully block playback in response to that, instead of trying to stop people's BD-R media from playing.

[spoRv]

...going to find $1000+ to devolve to AACS for my next project...

Seriously, if all BD-Rs are indeed not-compliant (even if many standalone players play them flawlessly), I still have to understand why MultiAVCHD output is often less compatible than other software - like EasyBD lite; maybe because the latter doesn't use menus? Or TSmuxeR making not 100% compatible m2ts files? Or something else?

What I'd like to find out is the way to let MultiAVCHD making the most compatible BD-Rs! ...or, another free BD authoring software that makes menus!

[Valeyard]

Probably something to do with the structure (.bdmv, .mpls etc) rather than the M2TS files themselves would be my guess.